Marx’s theory of exchange, alienation, and crisis: With a new introduction

This classic work of scholarship was published by the Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, in 1973 and was re-issued in 1983 by Praeger Publishers. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974. Roberts and his colleague, Matthew A. Stephenson demonstrate that Karl Marx was an organizational theorist who located capitalism’s flaw in its organizational structure. Producing for market separates production from use. In this separation Marx found the explanation for alienation and economic crisis. Although each capitalist firm plans its own production, the system as a whole is unplanned. Consequently, there can be over-investment and over-production that lead to economic crisis. The result, according to Marx, is that man is pushed around by forces of the market–forces of his own making. Marx believed that central economic planning would liberate man by establishing a direct unity of production with use.

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